Streaming television is in an existential crisis that is affecting both its creators and its viewers. Its revolutionary fervor has faded as the initial wave of expansion, limitless creative possibilities, and vast content options hit a wall shaped by a harsh reality: Subscriber numbers are either falling or not growing due to the rising cost of living across much of the planet.
The paying audience is shrinking and the main platforms struggle, often making irrational decisions to entice them. However, the public is more aware than ever of rising subscription prices and has also become more demanding when it comes to new content.
Logically, the big platforms offered original and quality content to make the audience fall in love. However, the strategy seems to be different: rely on stories that have already been told, such as The Lord of the Rings (Amazon Prime Video), or produce spin-offs such as The House of the Dragon (HBO) or Andor (Disney Plus) . That is, zero originality. Is Quality TV Dying?
Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max. (Getty Creative)
Add to that the fact that advertising could soon be widespread and experts predict that the now competing companies are doomed to join forces and offer themselves for one low monthly price in what is already a future reminiscent of the days of cable pay-TV consolidation suggests.
The list of seismic movements over the last few weeks is long, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter, Variety and other media: Warner Bros. and Discovery are removing shows from their libraries, some as popular and important as western world. HBO Max has canceled projects and even left films like Batgirl unfinished. At the same time, this platform wants to merge with its sister service DiscoveryPlusafter promising its shareholders a $3,000 million cost cut.
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With its shares plummeting and a worrying loss of subscribers, Netflix announced an ad-based model at a lower price earlier this year while cracking down on password sharing.
Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus, which can be subscribed to in a cable-like package, are raising prices after suffering a more than $1 billion decline in the fiscal third quarter. For its part, Amazon Prime released the most expensive program in history in 2022, a drama about Lord of the Rings, but its effects were far from expected: It’s not the new Game of Thrones.
From the golden age to today’s hardships
In 1999, HBO released The Sopranos, a television series starring Tony Soprano, a family man and gangster who suffers from something almost all working people have in common: balancing work and family life. He is unable to balance his family life with his career as a crime boss.
Greatly written and acted, the series marked the beginning of what is now known as the Golden Age of television.
In fact, it was this program that made television a prestigious place. Without The Sopranos there would be no The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc.
Actors Bryan Cranston (right) and Aaron Paul (left) honored at the 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards for their roles in the series Breaking Bad. Photo: Portal/Lucy Nicholson
When Netflix showed up
The medium first thrived when Netflix entered the scene and became a real challenger to the supremacy of traditional players like HBO. For the past 7 or 8 years, the leading streaming space has been committed to giving money to any writer with halfway decent ideas that could be made into a TV series. The result was an avalanche of content for Netflix subscribers, some of high quality, like Money Heist, The Squid Game or Dahmer, but also plenty of filler content.
Then the streaming giant upped the ante even further, turning its attention to renowned filmmakers who managed to attract the brothers. Coen, Alfonso Cuaron, and Bong Joon-Ho and even Martin Scorsese. Although the films were very well received by critics and audiences, the company had to shell out up to $225 million (in the case of “The Irish people”, by Scorsese) to make them. No one knows if the company got a good return on investment from these movies as we only have the number of views to gauge that.
Earlier this year, news broke that Netflix was losing subscribers instead of gaining them for the first time in a decade. Around 200,000 subscribers said goodbye to the streamer when he expected 2.5 million users. It was a gigantic setback and forced the company to take stock of its options. To address the situation, it will offer cheap ad-supported plans and ban users from sharing their passwords with friends and family.
It doesn’t matter whether Netflix launches soon or not. Importantly, it’s not just about Netflix. The golden age of television appears to have ended, and perhaps long ago, due to a number of factors.
The streaming war
The death of high-end prestige television as we know it began with the streaming wars, which are still ongoing. Previously, Netflix — and to some extent Amazon Prime Video — was the only major player in the streaming space. Now it’s a dozen. Competition is fierce, and to make things worse for Netflix, services like HBO Max and Disney+ offer decades-old content due to the long history of the studios behind them.
With the streaming war, almost all studios have joined. So far, only Sony remains on the sidelines. That was a loss for Netflix. Also, many have outgrown their “binge-watching” model of showing the entire season at once and instead want a gap between episodes.
Due to the large number of streamers, there was also a content avalanche. And since the new has only had temporary success, much of it capitalizes on the nostalgia factor that comes from century-old franchises; it is normal for them to recover.
Last summer, Bloomberg reported that a TV director who made $4 million a year is now making $750,000 and TV budgets have been cut by a whopping 30%.
There are still expensive productions like Amazon’s Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones offshoot House of the Dragon, but these are stories that have already been told. No streamer, not even Prime Video, is shelling out good money for fresh content with this virtually unlimited Amazon cash.
And that’s a tragedy. Because if studio executives weren’t generous with the visions of talented screenwriters, we wouldn’t have “The Sopranos” or “Breaking Bad”.
to all effects, The golden age of television seems to be coming to an end. Will it also be the end of quality content? Unfortunately it seems so.
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